NOUN PHRASES

Nouns in English are traditionally described as naming “ persons, places, things, and ideas.”
Pronouns are a subcategory of nouns. Noun phrases are formed by a noun or pronoun and any modifiers., complements, or determiners including adjectives,determiners, prepositional
Phrases,noun clauses, and verb phrases.


A noun phrases most commonly functions as a subject, object, or complement.
Example :

 My coach is happy.
 I like the cars over there.
 The woman who lives there is my aunt.
 Frankestein is the name of the scientist not the monster.
 I consider Meong my favorite cat.
 Small childrend often insist that they can do it by themselves.
 To read quickly and accurately is jhon’s goal.
 Two of my guest have arrived.
 Mr. Jones spoke to Dr. James.
 My friend works with her father.

Nouns and noun phrases perform ten grammatical function in the English language. The ten functions
Are :

1. Subject
2. Subject complement
3. Direct object
4. Object complement
5. Indirect object
6. Prepositional complement
7. Noun phrase modifier
8. Determinative
9. Appositive
10. Adverbial

From a functional point of view, the noun phrase has four major components, occurring in a fixed order :

 The determinative, that constituent which determines the reference of the noun fhrase in its linguistic or situational context
 Premodification, which comprises all the modifying or describing constituents before the head, other than the determiners.
 The head, around which the other constituents cluster.
 Postmodification, those which comprise all the modifying constituents placed after the head.


Structures of Noun phrase :

The structure of this noun phrase contains three sections :

1. NOUN PHRASE : pre – modifiers + noun
a) White house ; here white is a pre-modifier and house is a noun.
b) The three old Democratic legislators ; here the three old Democratic is pre-modifier and legislators is a noun.

2. NOUN PHRASE : noun + post – modifiers. ( the most common post – modifier is prepositional phrase)
a) The glass on the table ; here on the table is the post-modifier.
b) The boy in the store ; here in the store is the post modifier.

3. NOUN PHRASE : pre – modifier + noun + post – modifier.
a) The boys on top of the house are…. Here The is the pre-modifier, boys is the noun, on top of the house is the post-modifier.
b) The children in the garden ; here The is the pre-modifier, children is the noun, in the garden is the post-modifier.